I recommend tagging note types as a way of keeping them separate from each other. At the top of the note, I’ve tagged it as a ‘Reference Note’ and in my Inbox. I haven’t written a summary for this note yet. I also extracted key passages from this article using the Eloquent browser extension. You can see I have the author information and the link to the original source.
#Smart notes ahrens how to
This Reference note is for an article by Tiago Forte, reviewing the book How to Take Smart Notes. Here’s an example of a Reference note from my Roam database: Then, depending on the source, I copy or export my highlights into Roam. It also makes keeping track of your sources easier when it comes time to write.įor each Reference note, I create a new page in Roam with a consistent set of metadata. Storing them in Roam in the form of a Reference note makes this easier. You’ll read through and process these notes in the next step.
But your goal is to extract your highlights from a book or article so that you can start to work with them in Roam. I suggest using a Kindle with Readwise for books and the Eloquent Chrome extension for articles and webpages. It’s as simple as highlighting or underlining the passages that you want to use in your writing. The process of working with a Zettelkasten starts with reading and taking notes. It’ll be easier to integrate a new database with your main database later than it would be to separate it out. Getting StartedĪll you need to get started is a Roam database and some source material you want to work with. As there currently is no guide to using Roam as a Zettelkasten, walking you through how to follow the process, the purpose of this article is to provide one. The steps fit naturally into Roam and many of Roam’s features make the system even better than the original index card version. Zettelkasten, as a process, is a great option for that structure of your Roam database. In reality, the fact that Roam doesn’t enforce a structure on you means you have the freedom to create and apply your own. I see a lot of new Roam users make the same mistake I did: assuming that Roam’s lack of enforced structure, when compared to Evernote or Notion, means that you should write and take notes without a system of organization. Compare that to my experience with my first Roam database where I amassed over 3,000 notes but had no way of easily finding or using them.
In How to Take Smart Notes, the author, Sonke Ahrens, says that you know the system is working for you when it is easier to have ideas and to write about them as you add more notes to your Zettelkasten. The process was easy and fluid, and is what made him so prolific. When he had an idea, he would find related Permanent notes to build an outline and write a first draft. Luhmann found ideas for what to write about while working through this process. When he collected multiple Literature notes on a topic, he would write a Permanent note to fully flesh-out an idea or argument. The notes he took while reading would get turned into Literature notes: Luhmann’s summary, in his own words, of the author’s argument. He kept one collection of notes to reference these sources, called Reference notes.
The process started by taking notes on the things Luhmann read. He credits much of that success to an index card-based note-taking system he called Zettelkasten. Zettelkasten is a writing and thinking process developed by Niklas Luhmann, a German sociologist who wrote 70 books and nearly 400 peer-reviewed articles in a 30 year career. What is Zettelkasten and why am I trying to implement it in Roam? So I decided to start again with a new database, this time implementing a Zettelkasten-like system. So I ended up with thousands of notes, but no easy way of finding or using the vast majority of them. But in my initial enthusiasm, I didn’t think about how my notes would accumulate. I love how powerful and simple the tool is. I have been using Roam as my primary note-taking app since January, 2020 and in that time I’ve accumulated thousands of notes.
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